Most of us who have been parents will probably recall that our children's behaviour seemed to cycle between periods when everything seemed calm, pleasant and easy and periods when chaos reigned and we started to wonder what we were doing wrong. I remember very well the day, nearly half a century ago, when I discovered a book in our local library that explained how and why this process occurs.
"Research by the Gesell Institute of Human
Development has shown that this pattern of behavior is very common and that
children’s growth is not always steady and progressing from less to more
maturity. Instead, their development follows a course in which smooth, calm
behavior often precedes unsettled, uneven behavior. It is almost as if children
need to take two steps backwards developmentally before taking a huge leap
forward.
In fact, all children grow through predictable stages of
development beginning at birth and extending far into their teen years. Some
experts in the field refer to this occurrence as going through periods of equilibrium
versus disequilibrium. Children cycle in and out of times when they are more a
joy to be with, It cycles up and down and in and out of times when their
behavior can be more or less challenging – (disequilibrium). Hence, the “roller
coaster” of child development.
The equilibrium periods can be looked at as a time when your
child is consolidating learned skills; practicing what he has struggled to
master; they are plateaus in development. The disequilibrium periods often
occur as the child is entering a new, quick time of growth and development,
when he is mastering new tasks and working on new abilities."
It was a huge relief
to me to discover that this roller-coaster of psychosocial development
throughout childhood is perfectly normal and not some sign that I was somehow
being a bad parent.
I hadn't thought
about that in years. Until yesterday, when I suddenly found myself wondering
whether the increasing disequilibrium we see and sense all around us as our
materialist, consumerist Western culture starts to come apart at the seams is
in fact part of a similar pattern.
Do humans, collectively, go through a similar set of stages to those we see in individuals? I suspect that maybe we do. There are certainly many 'experts' around today who say that we are now in a new phase of evolution. But we know from history and biology and paleontology that new evolutionary projects don't always proceed smoothly or easily—or even successfully.
If we are indeed "entering
a new, quick time of growth and development, when we are mastering new tasks
and working on new abilities" it will be because we have no other choice.
Overpopulation, the ruthless exploitation of Nature and a
doomed-to-be-short-lived reliance on non-renewable fossil fuels has brought us
to the point where we MUST learn new skills and learn them very quickly if our
species is going to survive at all.
Shall we succeed?
Nobody knows. I feel sad, sometimes, that I shall almost certainly not live
long enough to greet—and enjoy—the next stage of equilibrium. For that will
surely be a time of peace and sustainability, when humans have at last learned
how to live in an ecocentric way, like true Earthlings, knowing themselves to
be a part of Nature and interdependent with all other life forms. If indeed
such a stage is ever reached.
If it is not, well
perhaps it is as well for me that I shall die unknowing and still hoping. That way, on my deathbed, if
I hear the robin singing in the tree outside my window I can die still believing
that there is a chance. I can die thinking that maybe—at least for the next few
billion years till our sun becomes a supernova—there will be robins, and trees for them to sit in, and a song for them
to sing.
